


Bad Romance

by MasterOfFangirlingArt



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse), Resident Evil - All Media Types
Genre: Any other tag would be a spoiler, F/M, Gore, Gothic fiction, I love GaGa but this has nothing to do with the song, Sex, This is just to cope with the lockdown, Violence, gothic horror, graphic depiction of violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:15:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23107588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MasterOfFangirlingArt/pseuds/MasterOfFangirlingArt
Summary: "Had she suspected the gloomy quietude was a creepy presage of what the night had in store for her, maybe she'd never crossed the RPD main entrance and she and her expectations would've safely riden home.""On Raccoon City streets, there stood a giant demon."If you don't mind a wicked story, lay back and enjoy this horror.
Relationships: Chris Redfield/Claire Redfield, Chris Redfield/Jill Valentine, Claire Redfield/Albert Wesker, Jill Valentine/Albert Wesker
Comments: 12
Kudos: 12





	1. Claire

**Author's Note:**

> This story is a homage to Twisted Redfield Sisters's "Family Portrait".
> 
> It's embued in that story's first chapters vibes and ambience. I loved it so much and dived into it so deep that this short story bloomed in my head naturally. Family Portrait has moved on to greater adventures, but I wanted to cradle myself a little more in the Raccon City it summoned in my mind, and take a chance to write something I never tried before.
> 
> Please do not expect hurt\comfort dynamics. This is no "One Month In Your Shoes". This is horror.

**BAD ROMANCE**

* * *

**Part 1 – Claire**

Claire parked her bike opposite the tall wrought-iron spikey fence that encircled the Police Station.

Raccoon City was particularly sombre that night as a dense cumulus of heavy clouds obscured the night sky and concealed Moon and stars. Only streetlights managed to pierce exceptional round holes of pale clarity. But even streetlamps, with their bent tops, seemed to stoop down to the intense humidity that impregnated the air like an invisible fog. Likewise, the black shadows they casted on the damp asphalt seemed to become almost tangible.

Claire took her shiny helmet off and paced resolute and serene towards the wide iron gate, her slender frame preceded by the squelch of her biker boots splashing in the puddles.

Had she suspected the gloomy quietude was a creepy presage of what the night had in store for her, maybe she'd never crossed the RPD main entrance and she and her expectations would've safely riden home.

It was late, the City was sleeping so tight that even the young rookie behind the front desk had been infected by the common sloth and snored quietly, dangling on a chair with his feet crossed upon the desktop.

Claire barely acknowledged his presence. She couldn't care less about that rookie. She was looking for a way more tempered cop. A real man. Not a little kid fresh from the police Academy who got intruders to sneak in right below his dormant nose! Not that Claire could be considered an intruder, though. Even if the rookie was as vigilant as they paid him for, it'd have taken just _one_ phone call to the right office on the second floor to grant her a permit and get him a harsh reproach.

RPD was her second home, at least since literally all the rest of her family worked in there. During daytime, it wasn't that rare to meet her rumbling about the main hall's statue. Everyone knew her as the big guy's sister. Everyone called her Miss Redfield, while only a few had enough familiarity to call her by her name, like Barry or Jill.

But lately, she'd got one more reason to spend even the latest nightly hours in there. A reason she both despised and cherished. Since it had fucked up her normal teenage routine and, at the same time, it had given her some of the most transgressive moments of her life - sex on that big desk in the small office was so indecently sensual!

Notwithstanding Raccoon City appeared calm and peaceful, as to brag about how much of a good place to live in it was, _he_ had been working a lot more lately. Some low-class, insignificant bunch of criminal scumbags were attempting to set up a city-wide drug racket, thus it forced him to take way too many extra shifts to complete the complex remand procedures required by the rise of busts they had to carry out. Being chained to his desk to take care of such low-level shit was absolutely ridiculous for a cop of his skills and experience. His place was out there on the field. He was a man of action, not a pencil pusher. Filling forms wasn't what he had signed for. Nevertheless, his office had now become his second home too. Some more days and he'd start saying he _lived_ in the police station. Some of his team already thought so.

With him on her mind, dying in anticipation for the fulfilling wholesomeness his company would soon give her, Claire confidently crossed the labyrinth of hollow corridors and steep staircases, eager to reach her desired destination. Her new second home.

Thus she flew light as a dove, her tousled ponytail bounced at every step that brought her higher and swayed at every turn in the path.

Finally, the S.T.A.R.S. office door.

Before opening the well known wooden panel, she placed down the small but heavy paper bag she carried and adjusted her ponytail, neatly combing all those untamed auburn little strands back into place.

She wanted to look perfect for _him_.

The man.

Claire pushed the door and with much of her surprise she noticed that the screeching of the rusted hinges that always gave her creeps even in the brightest of days, had lastly gone. Someone had finally oiled that stupid door!

She stepped inside and closed the door behind her. The sight of him sitting by his desk ripped a delicate smile out of her lips. His back was so curved as he sat nose-deep in some boring files he had to fill and store in the archive. The chaotic mess of papers his desk was, suggested her that he had a hell of a backlog. She glanced at both of the offices in that room and every other desk was just clean and put together. That lone island of tiring confusion pertained only him.

Somehow the outside dense darkness had filtered up there, as the room was immersed in a grey dim-light. But she was luminous and young and naïve. Every step she took on the blueish tiles brought a ray of light to dawn into the S.T.A.R.S. headquarters.

She was just a couple of steps away from him when he suddenly shifted on his chair to stretch his sore back and eventually saw her.

Bright, glimmering, lively blue eyes clutched to dark-circled, tenebrous ones.

Her smile met his smirk.

With an impressive velocity, he stood up and closed the distance that still kept him far from his home. He pinched her chin with two fingers and stroked her jawline up to her ear, tucking a rebel strand behind it. In spite of the long walk, her round cheeks were still cool and a wet for the sticky mist, revealing him how the weather was like outside. She ought to have stayed in her warm bed. He had told her she didn't have to show up every time he was forced to remain in his office as they had plenty of time to meet in better, cosiest places, but how could he convincingly tell her so when he'd missed her smile so bad?

Her grin washed away a whole day of tedious paperwork. Her youthful voice erased the pains of a lengthy shift.

"Time for a break?" she asked. "I got us some beers and Chinese."

Taking her head in his hands, he bowed and kissed her.

She already knew he had been longing for her the whole day, but yet she gasped in surprise and amusement when he harshly drew her closer and, letting go of her face, he squeezed her butt in his virile hands, pushing her against his groin.

He had been _starving_ the whole day.

He kept eating her lips insatiably and noisily crooned his arousal against her mouth. Only after having bathed her giggling face in a rain of tiny kisses, he finally spoke.

"How could I ever refuse a beer with my baby sister?"


	2. Jill

**This short story is dedicated to all those who are suffering for the coronavirus outbreak. I hope it will entertain you and help you fill the spare time that has forcefully given us.**

**Take it as a gift from a fellow locked down at home italian girl.**

**Love.**

* * *

**Part 2 – Jill**

That Albert Wesker was a total bitch was well-known.

The Alpha team Captain was as much of a bastard as he was a fine dresser.

Jill's guts twitched in irritation as she spotted him and his tailored suit on the sidewalk opposite Jack's Pub, seemingly having a good time. Arrogance was so ingrained within him that it enveloped his frame in a glowing aura of bare hubris. It radiated through his skin, crossed the street and hit Jill dead in the grey eyes.

Wesker was all appearance.

His austere deportment, his euphonious diction, the maniacal cure he allotted to his perfectly combed hair, it all was concocted to impress others.

But Wesker and his come-hither looks had no more effect on Jill. It had taken her a few weeks to unveil the trick but she'd eventually figured out that behind the masculine countenance there was... abyss. And it happened that, daring a glance at the depths of his nothingness, the feral need to stuff that insignificance of his with sex unravelled to her.

His _persona_ was all he got.

It was a trap set by a predator to attract and cage little sparrows. Preferably busty, dark haired and always younger preys. And with attitude. Because, the most tempered they were the sweetest his conquer was.

But he didn't use his charm only to hunt occasional sexual partners, he took advantage of the effect he was able to elicit in others also to domineer over his subordinates. In workplace just like under the sheets, Wesker's delight swelled incredibly when the counterpart put up a resistance of any sort. Asserting his dominance was his primary pleasure. And it climaxed when it came to be dealing with Chris Redfield.

Jill sighed.

She was very fond of her partner and she admired him for his good heart, competence and unequalled marksmanship, but he was too fucking impulsive. He had already been kicked off the Air Force for his insubordination but he just seemed to never learn how to keep his tongue at bay.

Sometimes she feared Chris enjoyed getting his superiors pissed off just for fun.

On that day, Chris had gone too far. Again.

An hour before their shift was over, Wesker had slammed two whole piles of unfinished reports on Chris's desk, stating that he expected them filled, checked and recorded on his own desk for the following morning. If there ever was a trivial case, an innocent fox's mischief disguised as a chicken theft, a pretentious complaint or any other humdrum drudgery then it was laying on Redfield's desk by then, in addition to the already increased work the office had witnessed in those last wearing weeks.

Chris had taken that obvious punishment without batting an eye. He was too exhausted to repost. Also, he always took responsibility for his own actions, no matter how impetuously he had acted or how readily he'd do it all over again.

Jill and Barry had played for time until their co-workers left and Wesker brought his upside-down broom-like shape in the hallway, before offering their help, but Chris had been unremovable. He'd have paid for his hot-headed drive outcome by himself. Barry, go home to your little girls and your wife, he had said. And with the same warm smile he had convinced Jill to take some rest as well. After all, he'd assured, in a couple of hours he'd have finished. Hadn't she a date with some old school friends, she'd have insisted a little more.

Jill stopped walking and looked around herself and away from her Captain, who naively sipped at his vodka far in the distance.

The vivacity of the teeming street expressed all the potential of a relatively young city on the rise. An effervescent cultural scene, new businesses openings, trendy neighbourhoods expanding... everything fresh was represented on those sidewalks so colourful, crowded and vital.

But the sky above was soupy, coarse and tyrannical. No lucky stars shone for Jill Valentine on that night. Unfortunately for her, she ignored that such grave ceiling was just _one choice_ away from crushing her. She only knew the night was young and so was she. Also, she knew how much time it would take to dispatch all the paperwork assigned to her partner. And she knew him and his slack way to face an untroubled night shift like that as she'd shared many with him. She chuckled to herself, absolutely certain that Chris still had a long way to go before he'd be an off-duty officer for what still remained of that starless day.

He was missing all that life. He was a handsome, sturdy man and he was locked into a lonely office doing useless shit, instead of savouring everything his lusty youth had to offer.

Chillness blushed her cheeks as she rested the cups holder on her car's rooftop and rummaged in her bag seeking the always missing keys. Some black coffee, a friendly collaborative pencil and an affectionate partner and Chris would soon be rejoicing before a drink in those same streets. Hopefully with her.

She drove fast not to let the coffee cool down. In few minutes she was already crossing the east wing of the huge RPD building. It was so late in the night that only rookies meandered in the hallways, fanning their nightsticks with the typical strutting of the newbie, while their senior partners took sound naps around. Jill shook her head and sneered. Rookies always get graveyard shifts. Even that good-looking guy by the front desk in the big hall. Jill's inner sense of duty suggested her to wake him up, maybe with a loud cough so he'd not be that embarrassed, but she got to deaden it. Maybe it was his second or third night shift in a row. She simply took her toned shoulders to shrug somewhere past him in the silent way up to the S.T.A.R.S. office.

Raccoon City could afford another sleeping cop.

While crossing the desert library, Jill tested the cardboard's cup temperature with the back of her fingers and smiled. Chris would've sipped a still hot coffee. Upon the last grey walls of her path, she projected Chris's surprised smile at her unexpected kindness. He'd have told her she didn't have to and he'd have insisted to return the favour. She'd have joked and minimized her consideration with a well faked humbleness but lastly she'd have eagerly accepted his invitation for a drink. That night Raccoon City's pubs would boast of _two_ off-duty officers.

Jill hurried towards the door that every day in the last year and a half had welcomed her and walked past it to get rid of the cups holder by throwing it in the trash bin of the nearby relax area. Walking back with one cup in each hand, she prepared her best smile ready to cheer at a surely dozed off Chris.

Jill pushed the door open and the dice was casted.

The desk she expected to find occupied by her portly partner was indeed the same messy muddle of paper as she remembered but it was desert.

She could turn on her heels and save herself but she had consumed her choices. She was doomed to watch. And hear.

Initially, it was just a shapeless, light-coloured, lumpy bulk that throbbed and rocked and pulsed imitating the contractions of a maddening human heart above her Captain's desk. But even before her second blink was over she sorted out feet and legs, arms and shoulders encircling what seemingly were two heads, dark and so close one another that only after the third blink, Jill figured out where the ponytail ended and the short masculine haircut started.

The woman, of whom Jill could see only hair and shoulder blades, laid all curled up under a massive mount of buff twitching muscles to which she clung and stroked with her thighs. She slid her arms off two round and hefty shoulders and, with the gracious lechery of a feline, she splayed them on the blunt wooden edge of the tabletop, sentencing her crucifixion. As long as she arched her back upwards, the auburn ponytail descended and revealed the leering face of that downwards tilting head.

The girl's head kept reclining beyond the edge until her whole face hung upside down _. Her_ eyes were closed, most likely rolled back beneath the eyelids, her shaky lips panted short, fast-paced whispers and her features were distorted in a grimace of erotic ecstasy, but it all was undoubtedly… _Claire's_.

And the rest... it was _him_.

Jill lost her grip on both the coffee cups as her hands had turned into molten butter. Black, fuming fluid poured and splashed all over the floor in the same moment when a whiter, hotter fluid spilled, unseen, into forbidden walls.

Chris stood between his sister's legs, nude and shiny in his own sweat. He raised his head from her bosom and faced the terrible reality that splashing sound hinted at.

His face was blushed and moist, he panted his blissful strain out, raggedly and hoarse, like a fierce lion after an exhausting chase. His paw grinded the tenderness of Claire's breast, harmless claws dipped into her reddened plump flesh, while the other fist supported him to hover her.

Dismay.

That's all she read on her partner's face in that bare second she still indulged in her paralysis. Fateful was her rushing away from that wicked office for she missed the cruelty hue that rose and tinged Chris's darkening gaze.

Jill run away. The RPD walls amplified her fugitive stomping and echoed the terrible rumble of her ripping heart. The marble insignia on the floor opposite the front desk saw her recklessly rush through the eastern roller shutter, from where she'd emerged only a few minutes before smiling and enthused, as if the main entrance was either out of order or clogged. But Jill was too distraught to acknowledge shortcuts existed, thus flew across the east wing fast, her fluster gone unnoticed in the desert halls.

She crushed against the last door and hobbled to the steel fire escape, gripping to it for support as tight as grief had gripped her and her bowels. Short of breath, she felt her legs growing weak but, with a strained boost, she dragged herself into the courtyard eager to walk off the station and her rising nausea. Jill glanced in disgust at the white halo of the three beaming capital letters that stood tall, proud and imponent above the main entrance, an unforgiving admonition to every criminal in the City to watch their backs as long as the authorities were on their watch. But to Jill now, those letters were as vain and delusive as the institution they represented.

Jill slammed against her car and threw up the toxic bile fermenting in her stomach. Wheezing, she leaned against the windowpane and breathed, but the air was too dense, too oppressive, the sky was squashing her to the ground too much for her to actually get some relief. The Police Station stood dark and gigantic in front of her and she swore she saw cracks climbing up the anthracite gray bricks whilst windows shuddered as for a wind or an earthquake. Had anybody else been on that sidewalk, still she'd have been the only one seeing such nightmarish vision.

All her certitudes were tumbling down.

RPD, S.T.A.R.S., it all had meant to her that there was, in the end, something worth fighting for in the world and that even she could hope for a redemption from a childhood spent beside a delinquent father. It had given her a purpose, to serve and protect everyone against the chaotic forces of human's ugliest sides. And now she discovered the police weren't immune to evil. Evil had slithered beneath the thick doors of its offices, the desks, the locker rooms and it lurked superb below its officers' belts.

Evil resided into the RPD.

And into Chris.

That crash was the loudest.

Chris had convinced her anyone deserved a second chance in life and he had given her an unbreakable bond to hold on to as a partner, as a friend, as a hero to look up to. She'd believed him. She had put her life on the line many times for how bad she'd believed his words, his smile, his courage. But he was no different than those hollow walls. He was as a much of a liar as it was the shine of their badges' tin.

Jill had never felt that betrayed in her whole life.

On that night, Fate had settled for her to lose everything she held dear.

* * *

**To be continued...**


	3. Chris

**Some really strong themes ahead so... be prepared or close the page. There's no shame in turning tail now – it'll be a secret between you and your screens. This was the last warning (can't tell how necessary because this is _RESIDENT fucking EVIL_ fandom and we're all pretty accustomed to / hungry for gore).**

**_Little advice: if you've already played the first part of RE3 Remake you'll possibly enjoy this chapter a little more._ **

* * *

**Part 3 - Chris**

In the darkness of the S.T.A.R.S. office, the coffee puddle laid tranquil, its surface just lightly rippled by feeble undertows. After the disruptive downfall, the brewed liquid had immediately arrested its conquest of the floor and it now just silhouetted pitch-dark and lugubrious like a bottomless hole on the blueish ground. Hadn't it exhaled a dense aroma of roasted arabica, it could've been easily mistaken for a pool of blood. Despite being a young cop, Chris had seen many of them with his own eyes on several crime scenes, yet the bloody resemblance was disturbing him.

The warm touch of a shaky hand on his chest drew his heart back into the world of the living and a bashful whimper snatched his eyes off the dark stain ahead. Chris looked down at those round sapphires that questioned him in desperation and sought answers, reassurances.

They say the second child is conceived to give a sibling to the firstborn, and maybe that's true. But to Chris it was the other way round. He was born to be an older brother. The day his baby sister clutched her tiniest chubby hand around his finger for the first time, he promised his parents he'd be a good brother. The day she was all he had left, he took an inner oath to do anything in the world not to see any more of those big tears that ran down her cheeks when he delivered her the most grievous of news. Not ever again.

Now Claire laid beneath him, more than ever exposed to the perils of the world he had sworn to protect her from, and she needed him to relent her sudden fright. She glowed light and pure and stuck out on the vulgar matter of that desk upon which he had taken her since the first time she had shown up on a lonely night shift. Back then, it had been him to propose her to fuck on Wesker's desk, revelling in the awareness that he'd have rolled his sweaty balls on the same surface his Captain would sip his latte and sit his doughnut on the next morning.

It was a backroom and contumacious way to rebel and it had soon become a habit. That night was no exception to the rule. But things had suddenly deteriorated and the occult vindictiveness and been frozen, annihilated and replaced by dismay.

Claire shamefacedly covered her bosom with her arms – as if it could anyhow appease the burdensome load of shame that grinded her indecently exposed nudities. The tender skin of her cleavage was still reddened by the fiery passion that had blazed underneath, a blush that mirrored the one on the panting face hovering her. Chris's passion still laid inside her, its lusty virility fading fast after the last blissful twitches and, in the turn of few more seconds, nothing more than a soft meaty member would remain of the animal drive that had compelled him to plough her up to orgasm.

"She saw us." Claire wheezed.

Leveraging on the fist he had firmly planted on the sleek surface, Chris straightened up and regretfully glided out of her. That was the first time that the sight of his semen dripping out of her to stain the scratched wood didn't excite him to cackle his gloat out. That night his sperm was another evidence of his "guilt" and he despised it. He tried to wipe it away with his fingers – as he wasn't desperate enough to commit flag desecration to the nearby hanging Old Glory – but the leaping sobs of his sister distracted him from finishing.

He cleaned his white-stained fingertips on his own thigh and bowed down to slung his thick arm around her waist and eased her up, whispering cheering words against the cheek he nuzzled with his still swollen lips. The rest of his sticky load of spilled love dripped freely onto the desktop as if her most intimate body parts were repudiating his physiological essence by spitting it out in denial, in a tardive and useless attempt to... _cover her own ass_.

Chris felt her hot tears drenching the hairs on his chest, each droplet burnt like acid. He enveloped her in his warmest embrace and cradled her against his skin. She was in a cold sweat for how bad she was shocked. She kept covering her breasts, embracing herself inside his hug, she seemed pretty desirous to get some feeling of safety by hiding her sinful nudities.

Weren't his strokes enough to reassure her? Admittedly, not.

He made haste to collect all their scattered clothes, _con amore_ picking hers first. Now the spilled coffee was the only trace left of the just committed crime.

But not the only witness.

As soon as Claire fastened her belt, she slumped onto the executive chair behind the desk, overwhelmed. Chris knelt before her and brushed her cheek with the back of his calloused fingers. Watching her hurting so was more than he could bear. He thumbed away a subtle teardrop before its descend would rip his heart in two and, softly, he gave her instructions on where to find a mop and a bucket to accurately wipe the floor. His eyes shuttled back and forth between her watery irises in a mildest gaze to catch her attention and force his words into her clogged mind.

"W-where a-a-are you g-going?" Claire stuttered.

"I'm going after Jill."

"D-do y-you think she w-will u-unders-tand?" she sobbed, grasping his hand and holding it tight in hope.

In those last years since the natural affection that had always united them had been impregnated by the semen of Eros, Chris had grown up not only as a man and a cop but also as a mendacity virtuoso. If, on one hand, Love had compelled him to restlessly pound the pavement every time his temper got him fired and to sacrifice his youth so his younger sister could afford her studies, on the other hand it had forced him to conceal to the rest of the world the sole good thing Life had allowed him: an unbridled, totalizing, unconditional love. And by doing so he had lied throughout. To anyone but her. He couldn't lie to her. And he wouldn't start on that woeful night.

Thus he simply kissed her mouth and left Wesker's small office.

* * *

The main hall rested silent in its opulence.

Chris leaned onto the banister opposite the library door and looked through the vastity of the huge ambient below. Only the gentle snoring of the rookie by the front desk stirred in the air, vague, leaping and buzzing. Chris knew Jill had passed through there. Not that there was any sign of her passage left, but he didn't need to be a hound dog to know it: the doors he had heard slam in the distance were undoubtedly the lounge's and the library one. And he also guessed that Jill had left the building. There were no safe rooms for her to escape the revolting truth that inexorably chased her.

Jill was running from him for she'd realized she didn't know her partner at all. He'd hands down find her for he knew her too well.

Chris stepped down the solemn staircase in his cocksure gait, careless of the Junoesque flag-bearer's vigilant and admonitory gaze. He didn't hurry. He had no reasons to.

The solid double door cracked open and the dank chill breeze refreshed his face after hours of frowsty air. Chris zipped up his sweater and resolutely paced to the street before him.

A mere bunch of seconds was all it took him to spot the vomit stain that had dripped down his partner's car. Jill had parked in her usual spot. So predictable. Except for that yellowish little puddle though, there was nothing else talking to him about her. But he didn't mind it. He knew where to go.

The streetlight enhanced everything manliest was in his face. Between two eyes that were two wells of obscurity, his high cheekbones stood out clear and sharp, casting a conspiratorial shadow on a jaw that clenched under his stubble.

On Raccoon City streets there stood a giant demon.

* * *

The ride from the Police Station had been brief and unperturbed. Chris avoided the teeming downtown streets and preferred an out-of-the-way itinerary. He had no time to waste. The sooner he'd get to her the lesser were the chances his already endangered secret would've been poured out to possibly anyone. If he knew Jill well enough – and he did – the first person she'd relate what she saw would be Barry.

Barry would _never_ understand. And Chris held him too dear to lose the support of the only paternal figure in his life.

Getting off his car in the desert alley between brick buildings happened in a creepy atmosphere and unnerving silence. It seemed the whole City had retreated indoors and locked him out, waiting for the disgusting wild beast to be caged and banned.

Judgement.

That's what he hated the most in the world, but he knew it was unavoidable in his case – a love so pure yet so forbidden it was repressed with jail – thus his secret had to be protected. Whatever it'd take.

* * *

_Valentine, J._

That was all he needed to read to know he stood on the right door's threshold.

Without hesitation, Chris knocked. Once. Twice.

The door was still shut, nevertheless he pierced it with his glare and mentally trespassed it. He knew she was inside. He could almost _see_ her startingly standing up from her chair. He had heard her doing so at the first knock, the metal screeching of a chair ringed unmistakable.

He had conveyed the second knock with a little more of his signature cockiness, to announce her she'd been right: it was him. He could now picture her biting her lip in indecision.

He raised his fist ready to smash it on the wood as a last warning that she better open up and listen what he had to say before he'd force the door. But his hand never got to meet it as the lock's click announced that Jill had got a grip on herself and decided to face her partner. Albeit she felt she was unlocking to a complete stranger.

The door cracked open only that little slice enough for her to peer through. Her frown was earnest, her gaze inclement.

"Jill, please let me in." he murmured.

Notwithstanding he was wholly clothed, she hardly managed to cast away the remembrance of him mother-naked and panting and screwing the fucking " _wrongest"_ girl in the world as he was when she'd last seen him in the S.T.A.R.S. office. That obscene vision would've never left her head and it had tormented her in her crazy dashing home. That wasn't how she imagined she'd have seen him naked for the first time.

It wasn't rare that, in her loneliest nights, the thought of his athletic muscles – which shape she could only guess by his tight and sweaty shirts – would violently surface and tickle her fantasy, inflaming her limbs and wetting her sheets. Her small studio apartment had heard her frenetically pant his name out more often than he'd actually been there. But what she'd witnessed earlier that night... it was so wicked and wrong and appalling that she now cursed every one of her lonely sighs as if her innocent craving had anyhow been complicit in her partner's devious attitudes and shared its revolting allure.

"Why are you here, Chris?" she sputtered. The bare mention of his name was enough to cause another gag of disgust to rise in her belly.

"I want to explain." Chris replied. "And tell you my story, Jill."

"We got nothing to talk about!" Jill grunted. "Don't you come telling me you fuck your sister because you had a shitty childhood, 'cause I ain't buying your bullshit!"

"Partner, let me in."

"Not your partner tonight. Just get lost!" Jill barked.

"Jill, I won't say it again. Let. Me. In." Chris snarled.

"Fuck you, pervert!" she hissed in defiance, standing her ground, and pushed the door to lock her partner out of her sight, in the vain hope his disappearance would snatch him out of her mind as well.

It was a blast.

And it battered her right in the mouth.

With a strong shoulder push, Chris had thrown open the door Jill wished to slam at his face and he rolled into her apartment. Jill stumbled backwards and awkwardly fell in a heap on the ground before she could even realise that Chris had now got in and had carefully locked the door behind himself.

"I told you to let me in." Chris calmly stated, towering under the big spotlight hanging on the ceiling, that again outlined his most devilish visage.

Jill pinched her sore nose and glanced at her hand. Blood. The fuckhead had really crushed her door in her face! She'd have _not_ let it go. "Fuck you, monster!" she roared as she stumbled to raise up.

Chris wouldn't let her call him so. He rushed forward and pounced on the woman with beastly speed and clenched her arm, digging his strong fingers in her muscles.

"Don't you dare, bitch!" Chris thundered, yanking her and raising his ominous fist.

The sight of it cut Jill's breath, and the little breathe still in her lungs was violently ejected along with a spurt of blood and saliva for the brutal blow he delivered in her stomach. She couldn't help but grab on to her aggressor, folded in two for the pain as she was. Chris unclasped his hand and let her collapse on her narrow dinner table, watching her gasp.

"You're the last person in the world who can ever judge me!" he snarled.

Whimpering in pain and tamponing her bleeding nose and lip the best she could, Jill took the second wrong decision of a night so full of unfortunate choices.

She reacted.

Her kick hit Chris's side but, as in pain as she was, it didn't result much effective if not in igniting his fury anew.

There wasn't anything more Jill could've said or done to placate him. The point of non-return had been crossed and there was no coming back for them.

Quickly recovering from her abortive blow, Chris dug both hands in her short hair and drew her to him, gritting his teeth in utter rage. He grasped Jill by the head and the belt of her pants and hurled her through the opening in the wall that separated the bedroom from the kitchen area, making her roll onto the double bed. He jumped over the same gap and followed her right behind, swooping in on her like a raptor.

That wasn't how she'd pictured him tumbling in bed with her, not at all.

Military training was essential for her to squirm and wriggle out of the choleric hands of her partner – now her hostile nemesis – that kept hitting and slapping and punching to humiliate besides hurting.

Rolling about in the sheets, he managed to block her leg by wedging it in his muscular thighs. With her vised in his paralyzing grip, Chris pressed her onto the mattress, curling his firm fingers around her delicate, subtle neck and began wringing. If he still hadn't broken Jill's neck, she owed it to her slim fingers that, instinctively, she had managed to intertwine between his to slacken his deathly hold and that now were crackling alarmingly. But she had no time to acknowledge pain. Whilst her face reddened to a bordeaux shade and the pulsing veins in her temples threatened to explode under her skin, Jill stared at Chris dead in the eye. His livid face, his frown so monstrously determined and his bloodshot eyes betrayed all the rancour that harboured in his mind. To her, he didn't even look like Chris anymore. But maybe… the Chris she'd so ingenuously believed to know never existed and now the beast simply revealed himself for who he was.

A lion turned wicked by a deluded tamer.

By the time, the feral animal had trumped the man, bringing him to be on top of his prey once more that night, albeit this time his impulse was anything but benevolent. He bit rather than kiss, he roared rather than moan in pleasure, he weighed on her breasts rather than fondly kneading it. He was light years away from the horrendously ardent lover he'd been earlier on.

Gasping for air, Jill _even_ hoped he'd change his mind and raped her instead. She was prone to anything but die. It'd have hurt, of course, and surely it'd have opened hurtful old wounds... but she'd have survived that night. A living body can always heal. She could've healed again and bore a new scar. But after what (and who) she'd seen him do not even an hour before, she knew her hopes were misplaced.

The grip around her throat had unbearably tightened and her vision started to darken and blur, her sore, caged fingers were now part of her own choking.

She was running out of life.

But Jill wouldn't have never surrendered to a stupid death my asphyxiation. Survival instinct wouldn't let her just give up and, bestowing upon her one last brief shred of stamina, it allowed her to toss him away by delivering a ponderous punch in his testicles with a hand she'd set free at cost of supreme pain. Before he would collapse on her, she shook him off with a kick.

Chris slammed against the near rack that noisily quaked, scattering books and baubles all around. Jill's uniform beret somehow ended up in his hands and it inevitably was squeezed against his aching groin as he instinctively palpated it, hissing in pain.

With great effort and taking advantage of having Chris temporarily knocked out and breathless, Jill succeeded to untangle herself from the coils of the sheets she had got wrapped up into in her desperate squirming and fighting against that behemoth of her partner. Struggling against time, she slithered out of bed and stumbled to stand up while, behind her, Chris was ready to a new assault.

They both grunted, Jill for the pain, Chris for his wrath and both strived to run until a chasing Chris got to block her, in her vain attempt to reach the door and hope for salvation. He thrusted her with such a might that she slammed against her fridge, so full of fun stickers and now sprayed in red.

Jill had never the time to regain her balance as Chris inexorably precipitated on her, seized her head with his sole left hand – so little much he needed to drag her as he wished – and he led her to the adjacent bathroom.

With a shout of hopeless terror that died in her throat, Jill's head crashed onto the mirror, shattering the glass in a hundred shards. Unstoppable, Chris continued undaunted to smash the unfortunate woman's head against the broken glass until the cracks didn't tinged in the red of her blood. Only then he retracted her and, keeping pulling her by the hair, he forced her to look at him.

Jill had cuts all down the right side of her face and her nose was visibly fractured. Copious rivulets of blood dripped down the mangled skin of her face and rained on her cleavage. Only the dark grey of her eyes hadn't been trumped by the crimson yet.

She cried, she whined and she wheezed under the unforgiven gaze of Chris. The woman slowly raised her trembly hand and, notwithstanding the acute pain her broken fingers caused, she gripped at the man's wrist and implored.

"Please, let me go." She sobbed. Just a barely audible sough.

Never words had been vainer.

The infernal fire in Chris's gaze enlivened anew and, with a grunt loaded in hatred, he smacked her head down on the white ceramic of the sink and the steel faucets with all the strength of his massive muscles. One. Two. Three. Four times until the noise of fracturing cranic bones didn't morph into the squelch of soggy pulp.

Only then Chris granted her last wish and let her go.

The lion had protected his pride.

Panting, he sagged down on the bathtub edge, while the exanimate body of Jill Valentine slowly slid off the sink and definitively collapsed, hilariously sitting upright on the immaculate tiles of the floor with her formless head leaned against the cabinet below the sink. Soft lumps of cerebral mass popped out the collapsed crooks of her bones and mixed with her drenched strands, and a pinkish liquid flowed out her broken nose just to be inhaled again by a gurgling mouth whilst all her body was shocked by feeble convulsions, last motions of a dying body.

It was almost impossible to still sort her features out of her mashed-up face, but Chris sensed her staring at him in her perennial last grimace. Even from death she was still judging him. In a last impetus of rage, he angrily kicked her knee and took his face in his hands, exhausted.

Chris howled the remaining ire and adrenaline in his palms, muffling it the best he could. A low grumble at first, that escalated to a rabid roar and lastly smouldered into a quiet whimper. Only when he was sure he wouldn't cause any more unnecessary noise he took his hands off his mouth and tried to regain his concentration. He glanced at his watch and gulped down a gasp. He had only six hours left to accomplish the impossible.

* * *

**To be continued...**


	4. Claire

**Warning: I had fun with words and I have an Italian mindset, so...**

**Suggestion: put on the RE2 remake soundtrack on and enjoy it. I wrote it with that music on.**

* * *

**Part 4 – Claire**

At last, daybreak.

It took the whole night for the cockcrow to dethrone the obscurity that had engulfed Raccoon City in its tyrant maw. It was a strenuous battle where the armies of day and night fought over the dominion of the sky. At first, the cerulean mane of aurora bravely charged the dense dome of dark clouds fluctuating above the City, but nothing came of such a feeble vanguard. The City remained under the supremacy of the despotic knight. Only when the king of the ether itself came to clash the foe, the darkness weakened a little, quivering before the blinding champion, but didn't allude to back off.

That conflict would've outlasted the day without decreeing a winner.

The morning came engulfed in a dull atmosphere that was more of a premature dusk than real daylight. But whatever skirmish was ongoing above in the higher spheres, it couldn't interest Claire any less. Daylight or not, she only cared about her brother's prolonged absence.

She'd not seen him since, a handful of hours before, he had disappeared beyond the doorframe of the S.T.A.R.S. office, when he'd left her alone with her consternation. Back then, the spilled coffee seemed to leer at Claire from the tiles between the door and the Captain's office, as to lure the girl and her misery in its shallow depths. As to swallow her and permanently stain her of the colour that, from that night on, would've become the leitmotiv of her whole existence.

Black.

Black like a tacky tar, black like crime, black like mourn. Black like coffee.

Black would've obscured everything, alike those thundery anthrax nimbi were obscuring her hometown. But storms come and go in the cycle of seasons, endlessly alternating sunny days to dreary rainy ones. Conversely, the light wouldn't have shone ever again within her. Black would've turned her into a listless ember, devoid of the youthful effulgence that used to smoulder under the ashes of mendacity like blood red flame. For the time being, the gorgeous foxy-haired girl ignored the imminent chromatic change in her life, albeit she expected anything to happen by then.

None of these linguistic flourishes could distract her from her glassy staring at the coffee puddle whilst, with the mop stick grinded in her hands, she winced as she saw the dark surface quiver and ripple all of a sudden as if it got life to awake within itself.

One, two, three drops salted the bitter fluid.

Two, four, six circles crashed against each other.

While angrily dipping the mop into the liquid, with the back of her hand she bitterly wiped the luckiest tears still stuck onto her pale cheek.

It was only her fault if they had been caught.

Chris had told her to stay home, go to bed early and do not wait for him, certain that the manly scent that had saturated his pillow would've comforted and lulled her to sleep. Instead of abiding, she had insisted on wanting to stay with him, dine with him, aware that her showing up to his office would've led them astray, straight on top of the detestable Captain's desk for another hot-blooded fuck.

Hastily, Claire had cleaned the mean pool, sticking to the instructions her brother had issued her with his affectionate yet soldierly tone. Moreover, even though he hadn't expressly mentioned it, she also took care to wipe away the only substance whose presence was to never to be found in an office. A tissue, a little accuracy, and nobody would've questioned the double life the Captain's desk led by night.

Claire stalked to the nearby men's restroom and she had to grip on the cold tiles of the wall as she watched the drenched-in-semen tissue be flushed down the toilet. The essence of him she had long worshipped was now being discarded as a waste to be ashamed of and she hated it. She hated how little it took her to get rid of the only thing of him still close to her.

She hoped she could get rid of her worry as easily.

She couldn't get out of her head the sparkle of tactical determination she'd spotted in his gaze through her teary eyes as he told her he was going to run after Jill. It was the same look she'd seen on his face anytime he came home with a hard-to-solve case that wouldn't let him rest overnight and pushed him out of their bed before dawn, as unable as he was to leave his job inside the four walls of the S.T.A.R.S. headquarters.

The young woman refused to conceive any thought about _where_ that gaze of him would've led their destinies, but deep down inside she quivered in fear. How many were the chances that Jill hadn't realized the upside-down face she saw moaning under the naked man belonged to the nice little girl her partner had introduced her months ago? Almost close to zero. And how much could Claire rely on her compassion and understanding? Maybe even less than zero, but she hoped.

With all her heart.

And it was with her heart caught in a tight vise of tension that Claire had saddled her motorbike, oblivious that in the same moment Chris was on the other side of the City, saddling and vising his partner in the vain attempt to strangle her and send her straight into the grave she'd dug herself with her bad choices. Her motherfucking secret following on her heels.

And now that a morning failing to bring comfort and to brighten her mood had arrived, Claire was wearing out the wooden planks of the floor that connected the kitchen to the front window of her house. She tried to find some convincing reasons behind her brother's lateness but with poor results. Maybe, after talking with his partner, he had gone back to his office to finish all the paperwork she had made him put off and leave untouched onto his messy desk. Maybe to talk with Jill had required a little more time than expected, maybe she was hard to convince their love was real and pure and innocent and that they weren't two perverts, but two lost souls who found a lover in each other. Maybe he hadn't even managed to track her down.

A light clinging of the key gyrating in the keyhole shook her back from her thoughts. She recognized the sound, the way the metal gears clicked and turned, the sharp creak of the handle being forcefully pushed down. Chris had arrived. He was home.

Claire dashed to welcome him, caught in the middle of a sigh of relief and one of bitterness for not noticing his arrival despite her obsessive watch. She had to admit that, sometimes, things just happen regardless of all the precautions. Sometimes one really cannot escape destiny despite all the efforts, alike Claire couldn't escape to notice the sombre, dense, terrible shadow that overlaid her brother's features. Their gazes laced, embraced, diverted but not a single word was uttered.

* * *

An overwhelming weariness accompanied his curved and heavy body to the bathroom and got to lastly trump him as Chris had to grasp the sink's edge for support not to sag onto his weak knees. Destiny was crashing him, notwithstanding he was opposing a resistance worthy of a Giant's, but the poor deluded lion wasn't anything more than a mosquito compared to its opulent might. He was falling under the weight of his own actions. So little comfort came from the loving, delicate, trembling arms of his lover and, for the very first time, even less came from her shaky, bloody lips, injured by hours of nervous nibbling.

Someone had stolen him of the soul that past night.

Probably though, it had been right him who sold it out in the same moment he had curled his fingers around his partner's throat.

"Where have you been?" Claire shakily asked, whispering as though she feared anyone could hear her question. She surely feared to hear the answer.

Chris's eyes were empty now, Claire found no answers in those downcast dark wells. The deeper she looked, the more scared of the depth she grew. Her brother seemed to have become a bottomless abyss of nothingness. What had deprived him of his soul? Where was him? Who was him?

Those unasked questions taunted them both, quietly.

Tiredly, he let her carry him in their bedroom, sit him on the mattress, unzip and take off his sweater and… too late! Too late! It was too damn late!

Even before the boy remembered the horrid signs that had marked him as an assassin, Claire's legs sagged and she tumbled down on her knees before him, struck by the blast wave the sight of those incriminating blood stains caused. She realized she didn't need to even ask to know she was accomplice of what she stubbornly, childishly, good-heartedly still strived to deny had happened.

"W-whe-re i-i-is J-J-jill?"

To hide the truth was to no avail.

Chris knew he had to tell Claire the truth as Jill's absence would've gone public soon. And he had to train her to keep up a big fucking house of lies he had accurately devised during the night as, with maniacal accuracy, he had cleaned and tidied up the small apartment in which Jill's life had been taken, ripped off her tormented body.

By constantly being hot on the trail of the worst malefactors in years of duty, by learning how they reasoned to be able to understand and predict their next criminal move, the culprit mindset had started to rub off on him. After all, the difference between a righteous investigator and the most pitiless and unprincipled criminal lies all in a subtlest line, the first one isn't ever meant to cross. Know your enemy they say, but they don't say to do not learn from them.

"W-where…" Claire wheezed, struggling to catch some air, as her brother's silence was hitting her harder than any reply. "Where i-is s-she?"

Nobody would've ever discovered anything, no one would've ever suspected of him, especially if the poor, pitiful, broken-hearted cop would've staged a good deal of noise to get from the Chief the assignment to conduct the investigations on the mysterious disappearance of his beloved partner, inexplicably vanished in the night, without leaving traces.

"C-chris-s, where's Ji-Jill?"

He had already seen to everything. The surveillance tapes had already been carefully erased, no one would've ever known that officer Valentine had returned to the station at some time in the night and, even if anybody had had the misfortune to see her and to remember it, their testaments would've been as good as scrap paper as long as he was on charge. After all, they always say nightshifts look all the same…

"P-plea-se, honey… tell me…" Claire wept and leaned on, to grab his cheeks and attention, too.

Only one last detail still remained to be disposed of. But Chris already had a plan arranged even for that.

"Chris…" She invoked once more.

"She's in the trunk." He bluntly replied, emotionless, transfixing her blue eyes and black heart with his toneless voice.

It burnt like to be stabbed with an incandescent blade.

Claire's tears wouldn't have ever got to wash a woman's blood from her lover's hands, neither they could remove the stains of homicide from their souls. Because Claire felt just as guilty as him – if ever Chris was still able to feel anything – no, she felt even guiltier! Her hands were stained of blood too – or was it her tears wetting them?

Claire cried, bitterly, remorsefully, hopelessly.

She cried for the woman's poor soul who had had the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, for who she was and who she'd never become. She cried for herself, for her brother, for their love now forever anathematized by terrible shadows. For the first time ever since he had kissed her on a cool July night on the swing in the backyard, Claire was now cursing and regretting "them" and she cursed herself for regretting such a pure and deep thing as the real one love. She cried for Chris and for the grisly intensity of what bounded him to her, indissolubly. She cried for him, on him and, at last, away from him, by then insensitive to compassion.

Can murder slaughter as the victim as the perpetrator?

* * *

The battle in the skies, so callous to worthless human struggles, protracted for so long that the night came anew.

All in all, that day ended in a draw, neither the solar champion nor the tenebrous nimbi had got to trump the adversary, and when the Lady Night came to have the run of her dominion, according to the natural order of things, it wasn't the only obscurity to mantle the City. It seemed like all the air had been transmuted in an ashen, sooty and asphyxiating vapour, thinly snipped by the subtle blades of fine yet gelid drizzle that impregnated the forest.

Their car hurtled in the road's hairpin turns with cocky aggressivity, casting pebbles all around like bullets in a robbery. Sometimes, in the most arduous bends, Claire heard a muffled thud coming from the trunk and it only aggravated her nausea, her new loyal companion since the afternoon. The thought of the stiff, cold, probably cyanotic dead body of Jill Valentine haunted her mind, molested her stomach, lacerated her heart and provoked her conscience. Chris hadn't enlarged upon details. He hadn't described _how_ he had put an end to the brief yet valorous woman's life and Claire wasn't sure if it was good for her or not. Ignorance was pushing her imagination to run fast and high. It was showing her a vast range of options about the corpse's conditions, the one gorier than the other. There was just one thin red thread connecting all the nightmarish suppositions: Jill's eyes.

In each fantasy, those clear eyes, so expressive and intense, wouldn't stop staring at her, unblinking, eternally wide open in rigor mortis. A dead woman on the watch. Were they really open? Chris hadn't told her so. How could she know? It simply was her intuition suggesting it was all so scary it could solely be like that.

In some visions the eyes were dull and glassy like a fish caught too long ago, but the tone of accusation was always the same. Jill wasn't gone. Jill couldn't be gone. Jill would never be gone.

Jill was waiting for her revenge to occur.

Until then, her shadow fanned above the living beings like a dome.

Claire shuddered at the thought of having to share that trip to the Arklay Mountains with a corpse. She feared Jill Valentine's ghost would resurrect from the trunk and nab her from behind, lugging her into hell, howling in the night her sentence of vengeance. A life for a life. A woman for a woman.

An abrupt detour vehemently drew her from the world of the dead, back into the cold cockpit of the car. The road was long gone, a bumpy ground of fallen leaves, rocks and dead wood had replaced it. All around, trees, black like coffee, reached out with their bony, gnarled, naked branches as to swallow that bearer of death, spreader of plague who dared to interrupt their quiet rest.

Chris had told her he had arranged it all and soon Jill would've left their lives and car forever, but Claire was sure she had seen him bring no pickaxes or shovels.

Claire gasped. In which state Jill was if Chris didn't consider necessary to dig a grave for her to be buried? In how many pieces had he reduced her into? Was he even able to do such a thing to a human body?

Why didn't she feel any certainty reassuring her? Where had that voice telling her he'd never do no harm to anyone gone?

The car came to a halt at last, in the middle of godforsaken nowhere. Chris killed the engine but left the headlights on, cast to illuminate a short piece of forest ahead. The pale-yellow light outlined the shape of a car, farther in the distance. It was Jill's. Chris had taken it and parked it there in the afternoon, whilst Claire was waiting for him on her motorbike, by the roadside. The plan Chris had masterfully orchestrated didn't contemplate to go around with a dead body in the middle of the day. It was too risky even for a cop, who definitely didn't risk a surprise perquisition.

He hadn't spelled a single word for the whole ride. He was dying inside, faster than he imagined. Not for the regret of having killed an innocent, no, he'd have done it again a thousand times as long as it allowed him to protect his secret, his love. He was rather dying for the regretful condemnation he had unloaded on Claire's delicate shoulders. He regretted he had dragged her into his own sin, to have got her complicit in such a violence, to have given her a reason to suffer and – heaven forbid – to fear him.

Such a thought, to have anything to fear from him, ought to never even slightly skim her mind. Never. She was his light, he'd not be her night. She was his life, he'd never be her death. Never.

A caress on her knee, gentle, almost shaky, almost scared to break her with a mere touch as she was made of illusory smoke, it was all Chris could convey before extracting the handgun from the glovebox and exiting the car. He loathed himself for her slight wince at his touch.

It was a heartbreak to see him lug that black and shiny plastic bag on his wide, titanic shoulders and disappear slowly, step by step, into the deep of the Arklay forest. In the eyes of Claire, he had the kingliness of a lion, and he sure shared its same courage since he walked steadily and fearlessly. She instead, she was growing nervous. She hated it, but she knew she was nothing more than a puny kitten in comparison. Suddenly, the woods that since her childhood had enchanted her, was now scaring her to death, the tomb silence deafened her, the pitch darkness phagocytized and choked her and she felt like a little orphan girl abandoned in the jungle of life, ready for the first witch to come eat her.

* * *

A panting Chris hooked his flashlight in a fork on a branch, casting a vague and silvery ray of light on the gravelly bottom of a steep scarp. The copious rains had amassed detritus of any kind down there and by a chance he didn't slip straight into the depths as well. It'd have taken so little, not much more than a poorly positioned foot and he'd have rolled down the cliff like it would've done in a nick of time the late Jill Valentine, valorous agent of Special Tactics and Rescue Service.

The black, wet plastic rustled as he rolled it to extract the exanimate, immobile body of his partner and Chris gave it one last farewell look before he'd kick it downwards. Jill's hair was plastered all over her shapeless face, covering the most of those gut-wrenching holes the faucets had bored into the thin bone of her skull. The blood had encrusted her greyish skin in a dark, lumpy grime, and her lips were pursed in an embarrassing grimace, leaving some bare cracked teeth to gnash like an annoying small dog. Her arms were tucked to her chest, and her broken fingers seemed to draw a replication of the lugubrious branches on the woody ceiling.

It was a very brief valediction, it didn't require any formality, or particular pathos, since Chris knew it wasn't the last goodbye he'd bid her.

He knew he was going to meet her remains again, when someone would've found her corpse, as soon as the exhausting researches that would involve a good part of the precinct's men – that he'd lead himself – would've been successful. Then, the last enactment of his play would start: he'd shed a tear, look away, pretend he couldn't stand the loss. He'd lie. As the dead body of a young woman, always smiling and kind with everyone, with whom he had shared breakfasts and patrol cars until the day before, was a sight that even the most accustomed to the cruelties of the world outside would not be able to stand without succumbing to sorrow.

Chris decided to take advantage of the moment and say goodbye now, in the way he couldn't do with his Alpha team colleagues around. He grabbed a fistful of those smelly hair, caked by the dry blood in crispy, hard strands and he forced the head to turn to face him one last time before leaving her at the wild beasts' mercy. A monstrous and ruthless smirk addressed Jill's perennial accusatorial gaze. He hadn't even taken care to close her eyelids as he had done so many times even to the worst criminals who had met a sticky end in a shooting. No, Jill fucking Valentine would remain with her eyes wide open forever. To keep them open had cost her life, now it'd cost her eternal rest.

It was his last punishment.

The macabre signature of the artist.

The leave-taking didn't last any longer than the smirk. Some indistinct rustles, far then near then far anew then too near, some flapping of wings from above, some distant howls, reminded him he was in the middle of a forest in the black deepest of the night with Claire all alone several dozens of feet behind.

It had taken so little to put an end to Jill's life, it took even less – a slight push – to make her messily roll down the slope, without opposing any resistance, and she crashed at last, resigned to rot in that gully under the scorching sun and the inclemency of the elements. Chris could almost already smell the decaying stink of death, that sharp odour of decomposition, it was dense, keen, almost… almost…

* * *

Maybe she was too young, Claire, to have ever pondered the idea of a life behind the steel bars of a few-square-feet jail cell, but she wasn't young enough to think she'd get away with it. Chris had been so attentive to reassure her in that afternoon, to explain to her how he'd avoid the truth to surface the thick layers of mendacity he had weaved. His hand had been so smooth grazing her skin, wiping her tears, his voice so soft when telling _why_ he had to get rid of the _corpus delicti_ , his smile so tender when she had proposed to dissolve it in the acid.

Acid leaves no bodies. Mountains do.

No body, no crime.

Chris had kissed her, sweetly, cuddled and cradled her in his arms for her ingenuity and he had calmly told her of some insignificant reports about some stories that a bunch of appalled citizens had hurled into their office and workload, which Jill had offered to look after. He had intentionally avoided to mention those two dismembered bodies they had found, one down the riverside, the other in an abandoned cabin in the wood, certain of the total carelessness his sister paid to local newspapers.

Chris needed the body to be found, and to be so right there, by the mountainside. Unwillingly, Jill had even given him the keystone for the perfect crime.

The script of his play was nearly a masterpiece.

Feigning to rack his brains in order to find a reasonable justification for his partner's absence, he'd tell Irons and Wesker that Jill had brushed over that she planned to go investigating personally, for one more time, in those mysterious outlying crime scenes and, when they'd _obviously_ find her right there, it'd be clear that the death she was after had conversely found her first.

She would've become just another name in the list of those dead-end investigations, that he himself would've insisted on inheriting in the name of their friendship. And soon that name would've remained unavenged, justice-less.

Chris had told Claire all those things to calm her, appease her goodhearted mind, to tell her that he, her man, her hero, he got this so she hadn't to fear any prison to cage her away from him. Conversely, on that night, those stories of disappearances pushed at an open door in the impressionable mind of the nineteen-year-old girl.

Evil was roaming the forest. She could quite sense it, quite smell it, quite… a BANG!

A loud bang, arrogant and blasting, resounded either closest or farthest.

With her heart in her throat and her eyelids so retracted that her blue eyes could almost pop out the orbits, Claire instinctively got down on the driver seat and, after some instants of terrified silence fanning beside her own rifling heartbeats, she raised the head to look around, praying for Chris not to have come across any nocturnal hunters with a motherfucking human corpse on his shoulders.

Another bang and Claire feared to faint.

This was louder. Was it a rifle? It didn't sound quite like Chris's handgun, did it? Or was she hearing things? Was it just the echo?

Who's the shooter again?

She wasn't ashamed of the prayer she addressed to anyone who listened: that it was Chris and that he had killed the hunter as well and protected their multiplying secrets again.

Gulping down her jitters and prayers, Claire dared to peer outwards, through the steamy windowpane, in the darkest dark, un-brightened by the headlights. Her cold fingertips tapped the glass as her face timidly approached. A heart-stopping scream died in her trachea and a convulsing wince shocked her limbs as a black human body collapsed against the hood, abruptly emerging from the yellowish aura of the lights.

_Oh, God, help me!_

Its face was engulfed in the dark, and each of its movements conveyed a tremendous potential of barely restrained strength. It hadn't a definite shape, Claire couldn't tell whether it was a beast, as its mass suggested, or a human, but it sure was in constant flux. Leveraging on its pillars of arms – or paws – it straightened up and staggered towards the driver's door.

Why had Chris taken the gun with him? Claire began hyperventilating, the only thing she got to do was to aimlessly hold on the seatbelt until the skin above her knuckles almost ripped.

The dark figure tugged the handle and, with a rough grunt, it got inside.

Chris was heaving.

For every pant that escaped his tight lips, a bit of air returned to fill Claire's paralyzed lungs.

Shouting a curse, he locked the doors, started the engine and dashed backwards in reverse from where they had come from.

"What were those bangs?" Claire yelped, still aghast.

"My handgun."

"What were they for?" Claire asked, scared to discover she'd carry another innocent on her conscience.

Chris was shocked, he hated the quivering in his own voice, he despised she had to hear him so vulnerable, he was trembling, his slippery hands seemed to not know how to grab things anymore, and his breath came out in ragged pants as though he had had to fly away from whatever had scared the shit out of him in the woods. Even if this cost him the chance to erase his traces, he'd have never let anything to prevent him from taking her back in the safety of their love nest, far from… f-from…

That lion wasn't meant to be the king of any forest anymore as long as some other monsters lurked in there.

"Baby…" Claire wheezed, trying to keep balance among all those unsettling bumps in the road. "You're wounded!"

"It's… it's nothing!" Chris gruffed.

"You're bleeding!" Claire cried, trying to tampon with her fingers the burgundy rivulets dripping from some bite-shaped cuts on his forearm.

"It's just a scratch. Let's just go home, Claire."

* * *

**To be continued…**

**P.S. to anyone waiting for an update on One Month In Your Shoes, don't worry. I'm working on it. I haven't forgot. (How could I ever forget about an Incestfield story?!)**


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